johnny dollar's archive: july-aug 2008

With J$P Video! Think Progress defames Fox News? Not exactly a bulletin; in fact, no more surprising than "pig eats truffles". TP's track record speaks for itself, and their methodology hasn't changed: use quote-cropping and cherry-picked snippets to distort and misrepresent FNC, just as they have done on topics ranging from Iran to Stephen Colbert.

Their latest bit of transparent trickery:

Fox News Host Refuses To Talk About Russia-Georgia War, Insists On Covering Edwards’ Affair
Yesterday, Russia launched a major military offensive against Georgia, which Georgia has called “a state of war.” Nearly two thousand people have died and the conflict risks sparking a wider war. Also yesterday, former senator John Edwards admitted to having an extramarital affair in 2006. Fox News has decided which story is worthy of more coverage.

Today, host Gregg Jarrett interviewed PBS’s Bonnie Erbe. “We have these huge stories going on like the one you’re reporting in Georgia,” Erbe noted when asked about Edwards. Jarrett, however, completely ignored Erbe’s comment on Georgia and continued to talk about Edwards... Throughout the segment, Jarrett refused to talk about anything except for Edwards’s affair... Of course, this is nothing new for Fox, which has a history of covering tabloid issues more than wars.

Naturally, the credulous Fox haters, free of any concern over accuracy by their refusal to watch, were happy to swallow the propaganda whole:

• They can’t come down hard on Russia’s tampering in Georgia, when the Israeli/U.S. attack on Iran looms on the near horizon.
  
• I never watch any [Fox] new’s [sic] and have been shutting off the local crap because they want to keep this going for ever [sic]…
  
• And that is why I don’t watch the Fox Clown Network. The nimrod and Gumby University journalists don’t want to report “real issues.”
  
• Wouldn’t we all have been more surprised if they had covered the war?
  
• What else would one expect from the Tabloid News Network.
  
• Get smart! Get informed! Turn Murdoch OFF!!!!
  
• Rupert Murdoch detests the Georgian Government and is certainly delighted to see them take a pounding from the Russians.
  

Needless to say, outfits like Think Progress rely on the ignorance of the gullible, as displayed above, to sell their smears. Because not one of those lemmings had any idea what Gregg Jarrett and Julie Banderas broadcast in the 70 minutes that preceded the Bonnie Erbe segment. (Erbe, it should be noted, was employing a variation of an old tactic: hijacking an interview. Fox haters just love when they do this. Just ask Judy Bachrach. But we digress.)

Here is a timeline of the coverage that aired before the Erbe segment:

• When the broadcast began at 4:00 pm Eastern, the first story mentioned was not the Edwards affair, but the Georgian war. Think Progress did not report this.
  
• Minutes later, Steve Harrigan did a live report on the fighting from Tbilisi, Georgia. Think Progress did not report this.
  
• In another segment, Jarrett and Banderas got analysis on the diplomatic implications from Amy Kellogg in Russia. Think Progress did not report this.
  
• Later in the hour, another segment, with Douglas Paal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, offered further perspectives on the implications of the war. Think Progress did not report this.
  
• And then at 5:00 pm, another live report from Steven Harrigan from Tbilisi. Think Progress did not report this either.
  

Think Progress claims that Jarrett "refuses to talk about" the war: false. They say Fox deemed Edwards "worthy of more coverage" than the war: a blatant lie. In truth, during the very program Think Progress chose to focus on, no story got "more coverage" than the Georgian war did!

Why can't Think Progress tell the truth?
fox news tp greg je